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An Open Letter to Sir Arthur Doyle 
from James O'Donnell Bennett 

Correspondent of The Chicago Tribune. 

Metz, Germany, December ]914. 

Twice I have read with strict attention, and with growing 
amazement an article of some 2,000 words contributed by you to 
tlie London Chronicle and entitled ^^ A Policy of Murder. How Prussia 
has degraded the Standard of modern W^arfare.'' To me that article 
seems a very terrible and a very terrifying document — terrible in 
its wrath, in its passionate sincerity and in its massing of state- 
ments; terrifying in its effect upon the minds of neutral peoples if 
its statements are accepted. 

In making some reply to your accusations I shall not so much 
try to say things that will call in question the things you have said 
as try to say things that will to some extent give another point of 
view than yours on one of the greatest and most perplexing questions 
of the time — the question of how Germany makes war. 

I venture to cast my statements into the form of a personal, 
but not a private, letter, to you because I wish to be temperate 
and mannerly, and constantly to make myself realize that I am, in 
a sense, speaking face to face with one whom I regard as a good 
and gifted man, a man who is not only a proved patriot but whose 
Avork is one of the adornments of the literature of his country. 

I would not come into your library and storm at you. Nor 
will I do that merely because leagues of land and. sea separate us 
and because 1 am unknown to you. It is for these reasons of pro- 
priety, and not because I wish to connect a little name with a 
notable one, that thus personally I address you. I owe you too 
much gratitude for many an hour of relaxation to wish in these 
troubled, feverish times to be either rude or patronizing. 

On the wings of your high fame your words will travel far, 
' and they will convince many. I have no fame but I have some 
facts. The opportunities I have had for gathering them may be 
estimated from this brief chronology: 

On August 12*^ I arrived in Brussels from London, where I had 
just taken up my w^ork as London correspondent for the Chicago 
Tribune. During the next five or six days I made brief trips to 
the east and south of Brussels — as far east as Landen and as far south 
as Namur. On these journeys by train and on foot I heard no 
reports that I was able to confirm of wanton atrocities perpetrated 
by German troops against the Belgian civil population which had 
observed the laws of war but I did hear of some instances of drastic 
punishment meted out to franctireurs. On August 20*^ I was in 
Brussels and watched for three days and a half the passing of 
thousands of German troops through the oMj. I was in many parts 
of Brussels for many hours of that strained and exciting time and 
I neither heard of nor saw an act of outrage or pillage. I did not 
see even an act of rudeness on the part of either the population 
or the invading soldiery. What I did see was friendly visiting 
between groups of civilians and soldiers at 7 o'clock in the evening. 



2 

That was four hours after the entry began. 

On the following Saturday, August 23'"'i, I started on a trip that 
took me in the wake of German columns as far south as Beaumont. 
On Saturday I was far in the rear of the troops and in towns 
which the Germans had not yet garrisoned. At Nivelles the party 
of which I was a member visited for two hours with the towns- 
people and some peasants who had come in from the country-side. 
No outrages were reported. Half the next day we went on foot 
through a dozen Belgian villages and learned of no atrocities. Tlie 
rest of the day our party marched alongside a German baggage 
train and saw Belgian women, apparently unterrified, giving cups 
of water to German soldiers. It is only fair to suppose, however, 
that they had been ordered to do that. In confectioners' shops we 
saw German soldiers civilly asking for chocolate and scrupulously 
paying, in marks and pfennigs, the price demanded. 

On Tuesday we were compelled to rest all day at an inn in 
the Belgian town of Binche because our feet were badly blistered 
from unaccustomed marching. We moved freely among the popu- 
lation, making small purchases of equipment and larger ones of 
horse, dogcart, and bicycles. A German baggage train or two passed 
through the town but no German soldier hindered our movements. 
In fact we appeared to be identified by the Germans with the Bel- 
gian population, and they let us alone. 

The next day we rode and marched by ourselves through many 
Belgian villages and towns. We heard stories of unprovoked atro- 
cities when we visited with the inhabitants but always it was ''in 
the next village, messieurs." Arriving at the next village we re- 
ceived the same assurance, and so on all day. Finally a Belgian 
burgomaster told us that he had been investigating the reports for 
two days and had come to believe that they were frantic inventions. 
Of the cruel signs of war we saw much and of the summary exe- 
cution of franctireurs we heard something and we heard it from 
Belgians. That evening we caught up with a German column at 
Beaumont and we were placed under surveillance by German officers. 

The next day surveillance became arrest, and on that day 
(Thursday) and on Friday and Saturday we had, of course, no op- 
portunity to learn from Belgians how they had been treated or mis- 
ti'eated. But we did have ample opportunity to observe how the 
German soldiers behaved themselves. We found their conduct ad- 
mirable. Even to five men whom they had gathered in as suspected 
spies they v/ere considerate. They did not bully us but shared with 
us their food and drink. 

On Friday night they put us on a train with scores of French 
prisoners of war bound for Cologne, depositing us at Aachen and 
seeming right glad to be rid of us. In Aachen we were under sur- 
veillance for three or four days by the civil police and then ceased 
to be objects of either suspicion or interest. The town being con- 
venient to the Holland border where we could mail our letters to 
America, we made it our headquarters for nearly two months. 
During that period I made two trips to scenes of German military 
operations in France, each time under escort of German officers. 



Tr an sf'f^r red 



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On those trips I had scores of opportunities to observe the iron 
disciphne of the German troops, their sobriety, their scrupulousness 
in paying for meals at the French inns and their good understand- 
ing with the civil population in France, and it is of these matters 
that I would make some statement in detail. 

In the opening paragraph of your contribution to the Chronicle 
you say that "a time has now come when in cold blood, with every 
possible restraint, one is justified in saying that since the most bar- 
barous campaigns of Alva in the Lowlands, or the excesses of the 
Thirty Years' War, there has been no such deliberate policy of 
murder as has been adopted in this struggle by the German forces. 
This is the more terrible since these forces are not like those of 
Alva, Parma, or Tilly, bands of turbulent and mercenary soldiers, 
but they are the nation itself, and their deeds are condonecf and 
even applauded by the entire national press." 

Haltingly, owing to a meager knowledge of the German lan- 
guage, but pretty faithfully for more than three months, I have 
followed the reputable Cologne and Aachen papers on the war, and 
I have neither read, nor heard read, any such condonement or ap- 
plause. Naturally what they do not concede they do not have to 
condone, and the German press does not concede that German 
troops have outraged the laws of civilised warfare. 

You say in your next paragraph that "war may have a beau- 
tiful as well as a terrible side, and be full of touches of human 
sympathy and restraint which mitigate its unavoidable horrors," and 
you cite instances from the mediaeval wars between England andFrance, 
and from the campaign in the Peninsula, in proof of that assertion. 

And then you ask: 

" Could one imagine Germans making war in such a spirit as this?" 

I cannot only imagine it but I have seen it. 

I thought it a beautiful thing to see my friend Captain Franz 
^ von Kempis of the Konigin-Augusta-Garde-Grenadier-Regiment No. 4, 
'standing uncovered on a chill October afternoon before the grave 
of the French officer who today is known throughout the German 
armies in northern France as "the brave Alvares." That soldier 
was commander of the Fort des Ayvelles near Charleville and when 
the garrison refused to make the stand against the Germans which 
he felt its honor demanded he killed himself. The victors buried 
him with military honors in a lovely evergreen grove behind the 
fort, and over his grave they erected a beautiful cross fashioned 
with patient skill from wood. And that cross bears this inscription 
in German text: 

Here rests the brave commandant. 

He was not able to live longer than 

the Fortress entrusted to him. 

By this simple cross of wood 

the German soldier honors in thee 

the hero of duty. 

Second Landwehr Pioneers Company 

of the eighth Army Corps. 

Sept. 1914. 



Some day in happier times I hope to show you the photo- 
graph of this shrine-place under the evergreens. In late October 
the German Wachtmeister in charge of the little force guarding 
Ayvelles was keeping the grave green with fresh boughs. 

It seemed to me a beautiful thing to see French soldiers kissing 
the hands of German doctors who ministered to them in the hos- 
pital at Laon, and I have seen few finer, sweeter deeds in my life 
than the action of a German doctor who placed an arm under the 
back of a suffering and distraught Frenchman, and, drawing him 
to his breast, said, "I give you my word that you are not going 
to die, but you must help me to make you well by keeping your- 
self calm." 

Two big tears rolled down the Frenchman's cheeks and there 
was a look of infinite gratitude in his eyes when the doctor gently 
lowered him to the pillow. 

I thought it beautiful and touching to see two big German 
soldiers sitting in the front room of a house in the town of Betheni- 
ville, not many leagues from Reims, while a little French girl, perhaps 
12 years old, gave them a lesson in French. It was they who 
seemed the children and she the adult, so awkward and simple and 
attentive were they and so monitor-like and strict with them was she. 
The French children who were begging pfennigs with pathetic, 
pretty histrionism from the princes, generals, majors, captains and 
private soldiers who came and went through the railway square in 
the French town where great headquarters of the German armies are 
located seemed to me to afford decisive enough proof that these 
little ones were not much afraid of Mr. Kipling's "Huns." I noticed 
with pleasure that almost never did they meet with refusal. 

And again, I could not convince myself that much personal 
rancor was existing between German invaders and Belgian non- 
combattants when a German officer, whose automobile was already 
well filled, stopped the car on a country road to ask a Belgian 
doctor whether he could not give him a lift to his destination. 

And in desolated Dinant I both wondered and smiled when I 
saw Ober-Lieutenant Dr. Lehmann of Dresden busily helping the 
Belgian mistress of the inn to set the dinner table when a party 
of shivering officers and correspondents arrived unexpectedly one 
chill night in September. The eager officer was perhaps more of 
a bother than a help to the hostess but she took his activity in 
good part and there was much laughter and chaffing between them. 
He had made his quarters at the inn for many days, and every 
Belgian about the place seemed fond of him. A month later 1 was 
there again for a night and the first thing I did was to ask for the 
Ober-Lieutenant. "Oh! he is departed! He is gone these many days!" 
cried all the women folk in chorus and seemed genuinely sorry. 
It was at Dinant, too, that 1 twice studied the method by which 
the German army is daily providing 600 destitute families of the 
town with bread, meat and coffee, charging them absolutely nothing, 
while families which can pay obtain food at cost. Meat is delivered 
to the local butchers, and German sergeants stand by in the shops 
to see that the people are not overcharged. In Brussels 1 heard 



an assistant to the Belgian burgomaster ask the German commandant 
of the city, Major Bayer, for 10,000 sacks (that is 2,220,000 pounds) 
of flour for the poor. I heard the official stamp come crashing down 
on the typewritten request which the official also submitted, and I 
saw the paper returned to the Belgian functionary with a smile of 
acquiescence. 

To go back to Dinant, I saw little human tokens like the words 
chalked in German on the door of a poor Belgian house, "Here 
lives a grandmother 98 years old. Keep out!", and on the door of 
another Belgian house the words, also in German, "Here is a new 
baby. Be quiet." 

Within a stone's throw of the first of the forts which the Ger- 
mans took in the fighting around Liege 1 saw in October the grave 
of a Belgian soldier. It was strewn with green boughs and above 
it was a wooden cross on which had been lettered in black paint, 
"Here lies a Belgian soldier." The humble, but as the times go, 
sufficient memorial was the work of German soldiers now guarding 
the ruine of a fort around which was some of the hardest fighting 
of the war. 

Such things, Sir, I have seen. 

In your article in the Chronicle you cite many instances of 
atrocities but in not one statement do you give the name of either 
the accuser or the accused. 

In the citation of humane deeds I can be more explicit than that. 
I can give you the name of Mrs. Mannesmann who, struck to the 
heart by the agonies of French soldiers writhing and jerking with 
tetanus in German - superintended hospitals at Hirson and Laon, 
undertook a perilous and exhausting journey to Germany in order 
to purchase the serum for tetanus and convey it to France. She 
is the wife of one of the Brothers Mannesmann of the great German 
firm of Mannesmann-Mulag. That noble woman I have had the 
honor to meet and, since she speaks as good English as you or I 
can write, I was able to talk under standingly with her. During 
our talk she uttered not one rancorous word concerning the English 
or the French. Indeed, Sir, it is only within recent weeks of the 
war that I have heard opprobrious words fall from the lips of Ger- 
mans when they spoke of the allies. 

Let me also give you the name of Miss Bessie Sommerville, 
an English governess in the family of Baron Mumm von Schwarzen- 
stein of Aachen. That lady wrote a letter which was forwarded 
with letters written by English prisoners of war to their families in 
England and in it she said: 

"I wish you would let the English papers know of the kindness 
and consideration we English receive at all times from the Germans. 
It makes me furious and at the same time sad to read the things 
that are being said of Germans in English papers. I mean how 
they treat their prisoners and so forth. They are vile lies. I have 
plenty of opportunity of knowing how Belgian, French and English 
prisoners are treated. I have heard only of kindness and courtesy, 
and all prisoners that have passed through Aix-la-Chapelle must say 
the same. I only hope the Germans will have the same to say 



6 

when they return from England. I could write much more but 
space doesn't allow." 

I hoped that Miss Sommerville's letter would be printed in the 
London papers because it seemed to me that it would bring comfort 
to many an anxious, aching heart. But 1 have been unable to find 
it in an}^ of the numerous English journals which have come under 
my eye. I sent it to the paper which I serve and my editor gave 
it a conspicuous position. 

Another little incident from Aix: 

Baron Mumm asked Captain Lyster, an English officer who 
was prisoner in Aix, what could be done to make him comfortable. 
"Better than anything else," the Captain replied, "I would like a 
briar pipe and some tobacco," — and he named his favorite mixture. 
Baron Mumm spent some time in seeking that brand and when 
he returned, the Captain asked, "How much do I owe you for 
this?" 

"Nothing at all, my dear fellow," said the baron. "In happier 
times you and I will have a good dinner together at the Carlton 
and this will be pleasant to remember then." 

May I give you another specific incident with names and places ? 
An English woman of prominence who is a cousin of Sir Edward 
Grey and is a large landowner and president of the Red Cross in 
a northern county, was enabled through the good offices of Robert 
J. Thompson, American Consul at Aix, to fulfill a mission which 
took her to a military prison in Germany. She confessed that she 
came through Belgium with fear and loathing of the Germans in 
her heart. She returned over the Dutch frontier with tears of grati- 
tude for what she described as "the unfailing courtesy and kind- 
ness of German officers," who she said, had not only allowed her 
to visit a captive English officer who was under suspicion of espionage, 
but also had given her opportunities to accomplish her mission in 
the fullest possible way. She viewed the prison and observed the 
treatment its occupants received and she remarked several times, 
"Why, it is just like a boys' school in England!" And she later 
told the consul how her countrymen had their playgrounds, their 
sports, their money, their servants and their newspapers. She was 
full of admiration for the perfection of the system and for the 
human, brotherly feeling which characterized the working of it. 

The consul told me, he could never forget the tears and the 
deep, womanly feeling of this lady as she expressed herself in part- 
ing on the dark, stormy night when he took her over the German 
border into Holland. Her last words to him were renewed as- 
surances of her gratitude to "the courtly German soldiers". 

Here is another bit of testimony from an English subject whom 
slander of the Germans has sickened. He is Captain J. B. George 
of the Royal Irish Regiment and he wrote from Mons in September; 
"I had bad luck. I was knocked out in the first half hour. I was 
two days in a German hospital. They could not have treated me 
better had I been the crown prince, from the lowest orderly to 
the senior medical officer. I hope you will tell this to anyone who 
is running down the Germans." 



And here is testimony from a French officer — Surgeon-Major 
Dr. Saiive, Rue Luxembourg, Paris: 

"I have seen in the German hospitals at Somepy and Aure 
tlie French wounded receiving exactly the same treatment as the 
German. I may add that not only the French v^^ounded but also 
tlie French prisoners whom I saw were very well looked after." 

With the following letter I cannot give you names but I have 
no reason to believe that it is a forgery. It was first printed in 
newspapers published at Kiel and is said to have been given to 
the press of that town by relatives of the German captain mentioned 
in the letter. It was then copied by several other German papers, 
among them the extremely cautious Cologne Gazette, from the No- 
vember 9*^ issue of which I translate it. A French baroness living in 
Lille writes to a German captain who had been billeted at her house: 

"Lille, October 20*^^. — My dear Sir, I must tell you that I pray 
God may guard you until you again see your mother, who surely 
has given you a tender and careful upbringing. I will care for your 
officers as if they were our own. Believe me, dear Sir, with deepest 
feeling, Baronne de B. — " 

Toward the close of the second paragraph of your article you 
state that in the Peninsula campaign, to prevent the destruction of 
an ancient bridge, the British promised not to use it on condition 
that the French would forego its destruction, " an agreement," you 
add, "faithfully kept upon either side." 

And then you ask: 

"Could one imagine Germans making war in such a spirit as 
this.^ Think of that old French bridge and then think of the 
University of Louvain and the Cathedral of Reims. What a gap 
between them, — the gap that separates civilization from the savage." 

Now may I ask a question or two? 

Why not think of the exquisite Hotel de Ville at Louvain 
which was saved from destruction by fire solely through the heroism, 
* energ}'- and ingenuity of German officers who, though comrades of 
theirs had been shot in the back by civilians firing from attics and 
from cellar-windows, worked to save one of the most precious 
jnemorials of ancient times, and worked to such good purpose that 
today the superb structure stands unharmed P I have seen it. 

Why not think of the choir-stalls, the paintings and the silver 
ornaments which German officers removed from the cathedral of 
St. Peter at Louvain and entrusted to the present burgomaster of 
Louvain, who, in turn, deposited them in the Hotel de Ville across 
the way? 

Why not think of the great buildings of the University of 
Louvain which are not destroyed? You say they were, but on a 
Sunday in October I saw them standing. It was the library of the 
University which was destroyed. 

"Think of that old French bridge," you say, "and then think 
of the Cathedral of Reims." 

Why not think, in this connection, of the three parlementaires 
which the Germans sent to the French, requesting them not to 
use the tower of the Cathedral as a j)oint for signalling to the 



8 

French batteries the effect of tlieir fire ? One of these parlementaires 
never came back! As a final warning the Germans blew down a 
smokestack near the Cathedral, and when they finally opened on 
the towers, so as to drive away the men who were signalling, they 
used very thin shrapnel. Days later I saw the towers still standing, 
and the statement as to the parlementaires I had from German 
officers of high rank, in whose speech I found nothing to warrant 
me in calling them liars off hand. 

Why not think of the art commission headed by a German 
privy councilor and head of an imperial museum in Berlin, which 
Germany sent through Belgium from Liege to Mons to tabulate 
works of art in churches and convents within the zone of danger 
and to remove them to places of safety, — not places of safety in 
Germany but places of safety in the Rue Royale in Brussels? And 
these treasures when delivered there were placed under the control 
not of German but of Belgian curators. 

Why not think of the fact that, almost without exception, 
burgomasters, curators of museums, bishops and priests worked 
loyally and frankly in the cause of art with the German commission? 

Why not think of the fact that one of the treasures they 
removed from possible peril was van Dyck's "St. Martin Dividing 
His Cloak," a masterpiece which, merely on the basest grounds, 
is calculated to make an appeal to the cupidity of an invader, for 
its money value, so experts say, is not less than £50,000! 

At the opening of the fourth paragraph of your article you 
ask this question: 

" Can any possible term save a policy of murder be applied 
to the use of aircraft by the Germans?" 

You are speaking more especially now of the dropping of 
bombs on unfortified cities by German airmen, and you say that 
"occasionally these men have been obliging enough to drop their 
cards as well as their bombs." 

And you add: 

" I see no reason why these (cards) should not be used in evi- 
dence against them, or why they should not be hanged as murderers 
when they fall into the hands of the allies." 

I am glad, Sir, that you are not a British general, for it is my 
conviction that, if you gave orders as you write articles, you would 
add fresh horrors to war. And also it seems strange to me that a 
publicist who so passionately extenuates the Belgian franctireurs' 
mad defiance of the laws of war should be so keen for reprisals 
against German airmen who have done only what English airmen 
have done. For, Sir, English airmen did drop bombs on the un- 
fortified city of Diisseldorf in an attempt to destroy balloon sheds. 
That attempt was only partially successful, but the next morning 
the Cologne Gazette described the long flight and the dropping of 
the bombs as "a brilliant feat" and said that German airmen would 
hope soon or late to return the compliment of the visit to Diissel- 
dorf. As a sporting proposition the incident made an impression 
which was not lost on the German mind, and hearty recognition 
of the fact was made. 



9 

The truth is that aircraft are, like automobiles, a phase of "the 
new war," and the world must accept them if the world is to con- 
tinue warring. The principle of war is, as we all know, to strike 
terror, physical and spiritual, into your enemy. This the airmen 
do with superlative success. There is, too, an ancient saying that 
war is most merciful when it is quickest, and the operations of 
airmen certainly expedite disaster and destruction. 

In your fifth paragraph you sa}^: 

" As to the treatment of Belgium, what has it been but murder, 
murder all the way," and you add that "it is said that more ci- 
vilians than soldiers have fallen in Belgium." 

I should not be surprised if that second statement were true. 
There is a reason why it should be. It would not have been so, 
I am confident, had the population of Liege, of Louvain and of 
towns and villages lying between Liege and Louvain kept their 
obligations as civilians, or, donning uniforms, gone into the arni}^ 
as soldiers. My observations in September, and again in October, 
in Northern France, convinced me that the civil population of Bel- 
gium and not the Belgian army was the principal cause of Belgium's 
woes. For in France the German army encountered very few 
franctireurs, with the result that there were few instances of re- 
prisal against citizens. Village after village I passed through in the 
track of the German army, and nothing at all was destroyed. In 
scores of inn parlors I have sat while German officers and privates 
ate. The landlady and her daughters would go busily and politely 
about the serving of food and at the end of the meal not only was 
the food scrupulously paid for, but the girls would receive really 
handsome tips. This I saw so often that I came to take it as a 
matter of course, as, in truth, it was. 

And always when the officers left there were courteous adieus 
and wishes for a pleasant journey on the one hand and on the other 
laughing assurances from the soldiers that they hoped they might 
come back to so good an inn "in happier times." 

In Belgium, too, I witnessed numerous unforged and genuinely 
obliging exchanges of civilities between the invaders and the in- 
vaded. Two incidents were typical and they were observed not 
only by me but by two other American correspondents and by the 
American consul stationed at Aachen. 

In the Belgian town of Huy, where the bridges had been blown 
up by the Belgians in their retreat, not by the Germans, the can 
containing extra benzol for the car of the German officer with whom 
w^e were travelling began to leak as we were passing up the main 
street. A Belgian ran up to the car, told Captain Mannesmann, who 
was in uniform, what was happening, and offered assistance. The 
benzol had to be transferred from the unsound can to a sound 
one and for that a funnel was required. A baker came out of 
his shop and offered the loan of one. A third Belgian gave ad- 
vice and assistance when the cans were again lashed to the rear of 
the car. 

When we moved on we were hailed and a Belgian, waving his 
hands and smiling, ran after us for 400 feet with a wrench that had 



10 

dropped from the car. These friendly offices were not performed 
in a truckling or a cringing way, nor, apparently, in the expectation 
of a fee, but with simple good will to travellers. I may add, as 
indicating the kind of discipline the German authorities have laid 
on Belgium, that in Huy it is impossible for anybody — Belgian, German 
or neutral — to buy any heavy spirits. Only beer and mineral waters 
are to be had. The number of altercations that so wise a regulation 
prevents in a difficult situation you will comprehend. At Chimay, 
also in Belgium and the seat of the prince of that name, who, by 
the way, had fled to Paris, we talked with an innkeeper when no 
German officers were by. We asked him how affairs w^ent in the 
town under the administration of its German commandant, von 
Schulemann. "They go well," he said, "for in all our difficulties 
we know we will get justice from the commandant." 

In Maubeuge we heard a French woman who was going to 
the mairie to get from a German sergeant her slip of requisition 
for German flour, say she was glad her husband was a prisoner of 
the Germans for now she knew he was safe and getting enough to 
eat. In the same town another woman said she was glad the Germans 
had come because it meant that "the thieving, filthy Turcos, " as 
she called the black colonial troojDS of France, were out. Mr. Cobb 
and Mr. McCutcheon told me they heard the identical remark in 
other French towns. I tell these things to you not because I per- 
sonally am glad that France is invaded but to give you the point 
of view of humble folk who seemed to feel that they had suffered 
from allies of France more than they would suffer from the avowed 
enemies of France. 

No man, however, who has crossed the eastern and southern 
provinces of Belgium would be so absurd as to contend for one 
instant that the German operations in that kingdom have not been 
a bitter business for Belgium. Were the traveller to make such a 
contention, a score of desolated and deserted villages and towns 
would give him the lie. Nevertheless there has been exaggeration, 
almost as appalling as the desolation, in the statements concerning 
the extent of the damage done. The wife of a socialist member of 
the Belgian ministry, for example, lectured in Chicago a few days 
ago on behalf of the Belgian relief fund and after speaking of the 
"murderous Germans," and what they had done, she made, among 
many other sweeping remarks, the statement that "Louvain can be 
spoken of only in the past. " 

That is not true. 

A liberal estimate as to the part of Louvain that lies in ruins 
is one seventh. More conservative observers are of the opinion that 
one tenth of the entire city is destroyed. I am inclined to accept 
the larger estimate. So far from being "a city of the past," Louvain 
is coming out of the heavy bewilderment wiiich its sorrows laid upon 
it, and, under German auspices and with German assistance, is making 
good progress in clearing away the w^reckage. In the day-time the 
people move freely through the streets and do not seem terrorized. 
The street vendors, for example, drive a brisk and good-natured 
trade in picture postcards with German soldiers. 



11 

German officers and officials with whom I have talked have 
never spoken lightly of the sufferings of Belgium and they are sorry 
for Belgium. "You have been in Dinant," said the Secretary of the 
German Foreign Office, von Jagow, to me. "So have I," he added, 
*'and it is terrible, but war is war and it is tenfold more dreadful 
when the civil population takes a hand in it. " 

And when it comes to the kind of resistance or rejDrisal — one 
cannot call it war — which the franctireur makes, you, Sir Arthur, 
know what the Walloons of eastern Belgium are. Turbulent, truculent, 
and unschooled, they fight — no, one cannot sa}^ fight— but fire from 
cellars, from attics and from behind hedges, using the while the 
protection civilian garb confers on veritable non-combattants but 
not accepting the honorable risks that go with the uniform of a 
veritable soldier. The adjectives which mankind has applied to the 
lower orders of this Walloon population, and the facts of their 
annals, are to be found in any guide-book or school history. Brave, 
in a lawless way, they certainly are but often devious and sometimes 
treacherous. You know the old proverb concerning the inhabitants 
of the ancient province of Hesbain, now a part of the province of 
Liege — « Qui passe dans le Hesbain est combattu lendemain. » And 
the fact was, and is, that the enemy who passed that way got his 
fighting in the back "on the morrow." 

The Belgian government felt a lively apprehension of the 
suffering which the Walloons, and their compatriots further west, 
would bring upon the kingdom and throughout the week or ten 
days of the advance from Liege to Brussels many burgomasters, 
and the minister of war, issued daily, and sometimes hourly, pro- 
clamations in which they pleaded with the people to observe the 
laws of war as bearing on the obligations of civilians and gave them 
the most explicit warning that the participation of civilians in the 
hostilities would bring the most terrible penalties on whole commu- 
nities and on innocent women, children, and the aged. Copies of 
» these proclamations, addressed "Aux Civils" I have by me. Their 
language is often passionate in its solicitude. 

1 asked an American gentleman who has lived for five years 
in Belgium and who loves the country, though he does not love 
the people (I refer to Mr. Lawrence Sterne Stevens, an artist), why 
these warnings had had so little effect upon the Walloon peasants, 
miners and metal workers. "Because," he replied, "the number of 
illiterates is so large in Belgium that thousands upon thousands of 
the people could not read the proclamations." 

And so, impotent and fruitless, these placards stared the people 
in the face from hoardings and dead walls, and the firing from 
behind walls and hedge-rows began. It was tragic but it was not 
war. And it was so utterly barren of permanent results, and 
it drew such severe reprisals, that I could quite understand the 
point of view of Major Bayer, German commandant of Brussels, 
when he said, "These Belgians do not know what war means." 

The event proved how justified were the apprehensions of the 
Belgian government regarding the sense of their obligations as 
civilians which was entertained by the humble folk of the country- 



12 

side and of the mining villages. Hundreds of misguided persons 
were shot and thousands of dwellings were burned. And yet, 
widespread as is the ruin I have witnessed, I was amazed at the 
discrimination the enemy displayed in meting out punishment. In 
Dinant, for example, the second and the fifth house in a long 
terrace of, say, ten houses, would be destroyed. All the rest would 
be intact. Manifestly the houses from which franctireurs had been 
burned. The rest had been spared. When you consider that this 
discrimination was exercised during the terrible hours of street- 
fighting, you will realize that, though the Germans, God knows, 
had been severe, they had not been ruthless. My compatriots, 
Messrs. Thompson, McCutcheon and Cobb, observed time and 
again during our Belgian wanderings the proofs of this reasonably 
accurate justice dispensed under trying conditions. 

In Brussels, forty days after the entry, I moved freely among 
the native population and made a sincere effort to learn whether 
the German garrison had subjected the Bruxellians to humiliations 
or hardships that were not inevitable in the administration of a 
captured city by invaders. I could learn of none that were scandalous. 
For two hours I talked with Mr. Louis Richards, the American pro- 
prietor of the Restaurant de la Monnaie, and I persistently sought 
from him specific instances of abuses which had come under his 
observation. He was in a very resentful state of mind, naturally, 
for not only is he fond of the land of his adoption but also the effect 
upon his business was deplorable. But when it came to the citing 
of instances of oppression, the most drastic example was given when 
he said, "Well, they take all our pigeons. They are very expen- 
sive birds used by the Belgians in their popular sport of flying 
matches. It seems a high-handed thing to do." 

As the boom of the German guns around Antwerp could that 
instant be heard in^ Brussels, and as information from the outside 
world might have been invaluable to the forces defending the be- 
leaguered city, it did not seem to me unreasonable that the Germans 
should have confiscated the carrier pigeons. 

And, on the other hand, it seemed to me that much was to 
be said in explanation of the strict regulations as to lights, hours 
of closing and public assemblings which had been made for the 
better ordering of the city by officers like General von Jarowtzky 
and Major Bayer. For those officers, among hundreds of others, 
some of whom had not come off so luckily as they had, had been 
shot at from, ambuscade, from cellar windows and from attics by 
civilians. As a consequence their attitude toward the Belgian popu- 
lation was not precisely trustful. 

Nor would it have been surprising if German officers who had 
seen 60,000 dum-dum bullets taken out of the Maubeuge forts had 
not been in a very placable mood. But Major von Abercron, the 
commandant of Maubeuge, had been so scrupulous and tactful in 
his dealings with the unhappy and anxious population of the town 
that the mayor of Maubeuge said to Consul Thompson, when no 
German officer was by, "As to the conduct of the German soldiers 
we have nothing to complain of." 



13 

Of the 60,000 duin-dum bullets I do not speak from hearsay. 
I helped to open and helped to photograph several boxes of these 
diabolical missiles. 

In your Chronicle article you make the question-rhetorical a 
potent instrument. Permit me one such. What then, Sir, of these 
60,000 dum-dum bullets packed in reinforced boxes that were piled 
high in the mairie at Maubeuge? 

And in view of the fact that the Germans had almost begged 
the French not to use the towers of the cathedral at Reims as 
points for signalling to their batteries I thought it rather a splendid 
thing that, in spite of refusal, the Germans did not demolish the 
towers. 

That their guns were not trained on the towers I had proof 
in the late afternoon of September 29*^, when I walked along the 
ramparts of Fort Brimont about five miles from Reims, and again 
on the glorious afternoon of Sunday, October 25*^% when I stood 
on the heights at Fort Berru, about four miles from Reims and 
looked down on the ancient city. The truth is that in the protec- 
tion and conservation of historic edifices not a nation in Europe is 
more systematic as to the method or more pious as to the spirit 
than Germany is. The owner of a shrine place is not permitted 
to demolish it and he can make alterations in it only by official 
sanction and under official supervision. He is, however, permitted 
to sell it to the government. As to the so-called vandalism, which 
has been one of the special charges made against the Germans in 
this war, one has only to refer to that sole remaining castle in the 
Rhineland which stands today as it stood in ancient times, and 
stands so only because it lay off the track of a successful French 
invasion. The path of war is, indeed, the path of destruction, and 
there is no nation, least of all Great Britain, which unnecessarily 
destroyed the capital of the young American Republic in 1813, that 
is in a position to read Germany a lecture in these matters. Who 
that has wandered among the shrine places of England has not felt 
a pang at some of Cromwell's work, but what republican does not 
feel that England is freer today because of Cromwell.^ These burn- 
ings and bloodlettings are terrible but they seem sometimes to be 
part of the discipline of pain by which' humanity finds its way to 
what is righteous and wise. 

As to the minor matters of caretaking and the observance of 
the decencies of everyday existence I can say that there was not 
a room in a single French chateau where they were quartered that, 
the German officers with whom I travelled for hundreds of miles 
did not leave in as good order as they found it. And in several 
instances I know that they left the bathrooms more tidy than they 
found them. In the saloons of chateaus, notably the chateau of the 
Prince of Chimay at Chimay, which had been occupied for a month 
by a large staff of German officers, the most fragile ornaments were 
unharmed, though many of them stood uncovered on mantelpieces 
and marble tables. 

At the stately staff dinners and in the barrack rooms I have 
found sobriety and decorum the rule among the German soldiers.. 



14 

In all my travels in German cities, and with German columns in 
Belgium and France, during the last four months, I have seen just 
three German soldiers who showed signs of too much drink. All 
were privates. One was surly and suspicious; the second was 
effusively good-natured. Both were in an inn at Beaumont. The 
third was in a melodic mood and was singing in the streets of 
Aachen. He w^as the only drunken soldier I have seen in a German 
city since the first of September and I have stopped in Metz, Trier, 
Coblenz, Bonn, Briihl, Koln and Aachen. The Germans are, as all 
the world knows, a drinking but not a drunken people. In war time 
this decent moderation is not abandoned. In all my travels I have 
observed the soldiers closely and I have found them neither profane 
nor drunken. On the contrary I have time and again— at Laon and 
at Charleville in France and at Metz and Aachen in Germany — seen 
them kneeling in prayer before the high altars of the cathedrals. 

Of the womanly devotion of the German Kriegsschwestern, and 
of the homage accorded them by officers of the highest rank, I will 
not speak in detail because I know that such devotion is not pecu- 
liar to the women of any one nation, nor is the homage vouchsafed 
to war-sisters withheld by any man worthy of the name of man. 

The stately etiquette observed at the staff dinners which I have 
attended may be worth a word of mention because it will assist you 
to differentiate the German officers from Mr. Kipling's "Huns." 
That formality and courtliness I have noted at the table of the 
sterling von Zweel, which was laid in a grove on the firing line, 
of the venerable and benevolent von Heeringen, of the suave 
d'Elsa and of the unassuming and friendly von Gebsattel. 

At not one of these dinners, though the wine went round freely, 
have I ever heard an oath or an indecorous tale. Nay, I must 
modify that statement a little. An old captain who was riding with 
us one day did tell us a racy story, but it was not vile audit had 
a very funny point to extenuate its coarseness. 

One other fact as to the moral of the army. Constantly the 
Young Men's Christian Association is following the troops, and no 
sooner is a Belgian or a French town garrisoned than the asso- 
ciation establishes in that town reading and writing and dining and 
visiting rooms for the soldiers. These quarters, known as " Soldaten- 
heime, " are directed by both Evangelical and Catholic chaplains, 
and both Evangelical and Cathohc services are given under the 
auspices of the Y. M. C. A. 

There are three or four more points in your article which I 
should like to touch on briefly. They come in the massing of state- 
ments towards the close of your remarks. 

Notably you say this: 

"Do you imagine that the thing has been exaggerated? Far 
from it, the volume of crime has not yet been appreciated." And 
you ask your readers to "peruse the horrible accounts taken by 
the Belgian Commission, which took evidence in the most careful 
and conscientious fashion." 

Now my observation is that there has been the most frightful 
exaggeration. War, as everybody knows, is a breeder of Hes. This 



15 

one is no exception. Everybody believes what he vrants to beheve, 
and most persons seem to resent the truth if it fails to fit in w^ith 
gossip and rumor already accepted. Partly, in the case of Belgium, 
this is so because the sympathies of the vi^orld have been passion- 
ately enlistened for Belgium, and partly because it is not in poor 
human nature to M'ish to change our opinion of persons of whom 
we have believed the worst and for whom we have expressed the 
deepest loathing. 

Lies, lies, lies, have multiplied with the passing of the weary 
days of August, September, October, November and December, and 
not always have they sprung from malevolence so much as from 
credulity. Anything was believed, from the preposterous statement 
that eggs were costing one mark each in Germany, to forged pro- 
clamations and edicts, purporting to be addressed by the German 
emperor to the empire and beginning, ''It is our royal and imperial 
will." Every traveler who pays two marks in a German hotel for 
an early breakfast of three eggs, bread, butter, cheese, jam and 
coffee knows that eggs are not costing one mark each, and every- 
body who is at all familiar with the wording of imperial procla- 
mations knows that when the German emperor addresses the empire 
he does not touch on the fact that he is also king of Prussia by 
speaking of his "royal will." Your own amazing ingenuity in de- 
duction has long since taught you the worthlessness of evidence 
given by persons who testify in rancor or from hearsay. Of that 
character, I firmly believe, have been the wicked stories told in 
turn about combattants of every nationality engaged in this war. 
Many of them ha^^e been the stock slanders of every war, stories 
as old as the annals of the race. They were told during the Civil 
war in America. I heard them in Cuba during the Spanish-American 
war. And the wisest words I ever read on that whole matter were 
written by the good and chivalrous Lord Roberts only a few months 
before his death. They are these: 

"May I give a word of caution to my countrymen against the 
unsportsmanlike practice of abusing one's enemies. Let us avoid 
what Kipling, during the Boer war described as killing a Kruger 
with your mouth .... When we read charges against German 
troops, let us remember that gross charges, absolutely untrue, were 
brought against our own brave soldiers fighting in South Africa. 
But whether the charges are true or not, let us keep our own 
hands clean and let us fight against the Germans in such a way as 
to earn their liking as well as their respect. " 

There never was a truer saying than that a good soldier respects 
a good soldier. In my talks with German soldiers I have had re- 
l)eated proof of that. They did not curse or blackguard the French, 
the English, the Russians, the Belgians or the Indians. And General 
von Heeringen said to the party of which I was a member, "The 
E^nglish are good boys! They stand." Of the Scotch soldiers a 
German officer whose name I have forgotten, said, "There is only 
one thing to do with a Scotchman — capture him or kill him." The 
compliment was not softly worded but it was an honest soldier's 
honest tribute. 



IG 

The Germans are not liars. They are so loyal to the truth 
that their loyalty sometimes lapses into gross bluntness of speech. 
They call a spade a spade and their bluntness sometimes leads them 
to use the crude word when another would do as well. They 
consider a lie not clever but ignominious and their point of view was 
given with beautiful terseness one day by Captain Alfred Mannes- 
mann, who was storming about some peculiarly hideous slander 
which had appeared in an English journal which the Germans call 
"The Daily Liar." 

"That statement," said the captain, ''is not true. We Germans 
have explicitly denied it more than once and we are not liars. We 
hate lies. My father used to say to me and my brothers, 'You 
must be too proud to lie.' He brought us up on that saying — ' You 
must be too proud to lie'." 

Unscrupulous correspondents, too, have been a deplorable factor 
in this war. Of one of them — I regret to say a countryman of 
mine— who had written, and got printed in America, the most hide- 
ous charges against the Germans, the American Minister to Belgium 
said to me, "The man is a rat and a disgrace to journalism." I 
violate no confidence when I add that this diplomate's sympathies, 
though he had not publicly expressed them, were believed to be with 
the Belgians. But he none-the-less hated lies about the enemies of 
Belgium. 

I mention the case of this correspondent because you speak of 
the " consistent, systematic lying of the German press." This char- 
tered liar, whom Minister Whitlock denounced and who was getting 
his lies printed in England and America, wrote things that for 
falseness and scurrility and bombast I have not seen even faintly 
approached in the least trustworthy sheet in Germany. 

Just one more point. In a document addressed a few days ago 
by British women living in Aachen "to his Britanic Majesty's Gov- 
ernment" I find this sentence: 

" The British women in Germany submit that up to the present 
they have been treated with the greatest forbearance and considera- 
tion by the German authorities, as befitted the representatives of this 
great nation." 

That is testimony from your own people. 

My testimony is the testimony of an American who loves England 
and who has not a drop of German blood in his veins. What 
things I have seen 1 have here set down because I believe that what 
i-aises the man of my calling above the level of a scribbler is the 
telling of the truth. 

James O'Donnell Bennett 

Correspondent of The Chicago Tribune. 



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